Nothing, including aces, automatic for Dodgers

Three-time NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw is 0-4 in his last four postseason starts.

Three-time NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw is 0-4 in his...

When the Los Angeles Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman to run their baseball operations last fall, his grasp of analytics was part of the attraction. So it was only logical that Friedman would cite percentages in explaining whether a front office can actually engineer a roster for October success.

"It's difficult," Friedman said last month before a game at Dodger Stadium. "In the regular season, the best team wins roughly 60 percent of the time, and the worst team wins roughly 40 percent of the time. That's only a 20 percent spread between the best and the worst. You get to the playoffs, and obviously, that shrinks even more.

"And so much of it's how you're playing at the time and if you catch more breaks and the depth of your roster for different things that come up. There are a lot of different factors that go into it, but I don't know that we have put our finger on exactly one or two things."

Playoff perils

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Of course, the Dodgers have two important things they hope will carry them to their first championship since 1988: the pitching arms of Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. Yet in their two years together, they have not lifted the Dodgers out of the NL playoffs. In 10 combined starts in the last two postseasons, they are 2-5 with a 3.53 ERA.

Kershaw, who starts Game 1 against Jacob deGrom on Friday, has 47 strikeouts in 352⁄3 innings over that span. But ill-timed mistakes have doomed him to lose his last four postseason starts. Greinke has been much better, with a 1.93 ERA, if only about half as many strikeouts.

The New York Mets' young starters have similarly dominant stuff, without the track record of working deep in games. Doing so will be especially important for the Dodgers, who have a star closer in Kenley Jansen but less imposing setup men.

The Mets have won games started by Kershaw and Greinke this season, and that was while David Wright was injured and before their trade for outfielder Yoenis Cespedes. Then again, the Mets have never faced Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager, who hit .337 with four homers after his promotion in early September.

The Mets are starting righthanders in the first three games, and Seager hits lefthanded. So does Adrian Gonzalez, who has only 22 career at-bats off deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey but has homered off each.

Banana appeal

If things get desperate for the Dodgers, don't be surprised to see a utility man in a banana suit. Enrique Hernandez started at six positions and hit .307 for the Dodgers, and he also conjured the magic of the rally banana. On May 23, when the Dodgers' hitters tied a franchise record for scoreless innings at 35, Hernandez reached for a banana on the bench, and the team scored to break the drought. He proclaimed it a "rally banana" on Twitter, and on Sept. 1, in a 14-inning game, he wore a banana suit in the dugout - on orders from Friedman. The Dodgers promptly won.